LACMTA Board establishes budget; awards contract for section two of Purple Line extension
Written by Kyra Senese, Managing Editor
LACMTA
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) Board of Directors has awarded a $1.37 billion contract to the joint venture Tutor Perini/O & G to construct the second section of its Purple Line Extension Project.
The extension will expand the line’s service to Century City, and the board has set a project budget of $2.4 billion.
LACMTA says the joint venture’s proposal was competitive, being about $500 million less than competing offers. The transportation authority previously recommended Tutor Perini/O & G for the project’s second phase on Jan. 17.
“[The] contract award to Tutor Perini brings us one step closer to fulfilling our promise to bring fast, reliable, high-capacity subway service to the Westside,” said John Fasana, LACMTA board chair and Duarte City Council member. “We now have the funding in place and the contractor on board to expedite delivery of this high priority, regionally beneficial transit project for Los Angeles County.”
The transportation authority says it carried out an extensive competitive bidding process, which deemed the Tutor Perini team’s proposal as the best offer overall due to its technical, project management and cost aspects.
“All three proposals submitted were comparable on their technical merits, but the Tutor Perini team had the best value proposal,” LACMTA said in a statement.
The Tutor Perini/O&G team and its subcontractors have previously completed notable subway tunnel projects for the Central Subway project in San Francisco, the University Link in Seattle and New York’s East Side Access project, in addition to helping to build the World Trade Center’s Greenwich Street Corridor for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The second subway section is set for completion by or before 2026, as outlined in a funding agreement with the Federal Transit Administration, representatives say. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced $1.6 billion in federal funding in early January to support LACMTA’s efforts to bring the Purple Line’s second section to fruition.
“This team has a recent history of delivering successful tunneling projects across the globe,” said Metro CEO Phillip A. Washington. “Metro is confident this contractor will play a critical role in helping us build the world-class public transportation system we have promised to voters.”
The second segment of the extension will bring an added 2.6 miles to the Purple Line with a station in the center of Century City and another at Wilshire/Rodeo in downtown Beverly Hills.
Tutor Perini also participated in the construction of LACMTA’s original Red Line. The contractor built its second and third sections, completing the third segment six months earlier than expected while remaining within the allotted project budget.
The transportation authority says it plans to provide strong oversight to enable the project’s timely and cost-effective delivery, which LACMTA officials say will entail “executive partnering” between the transportation authority and the contractor “up to the CEO level” to address project modifications and claims.
